"Woven Heartstrings" Getting Lots of Love

I hope everyone has been warm and safe this winter. There have been some nasty storms coming through the US this past week or so. Luckily, things turned out fairly nice for us on the upper East Coast. Not nearly as much as we were supposed to get, and it is so pretty.

 

Outside my front door.
Look at that sunrise.

 

Outside my garage.
The parking lot has been
really well maintained.

When the storm hit on Sunday I was already off of work, but it still felt like a snow day for me. Hubby had to work until 4, so I had the house to myself; snuggled inside under two thick blankets.

I had most of the day to write or read or clean or play video games. I could just do whatever I wanted.

Since I slacked off and didn't write anything down on my calendar for Sunday - not that it matters because there's barely any space for Sunday in my planner - I can't really say what it was that I actually did.

All I know is that it kept FOREVER to finish off my latest chapter of "Woven Heartstrings." I don't know what it was, but I just kept avoiding that chapter. I would write for about 20min, and then I'd spend an hour on Tumblr, or I would make myself an elaborate meal, or I would read someone else's fanfic, or I would decide "Ya know? RIGHT NOW is the perfect time to finally get into 'Steven Universe'."

I'm like 11 episodes in now; just met Opal.

For the life of me, I couldn't stay focused on the chapter. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to write. I had detailed notes. I am at the home-stretch with my story now. This latest chapter was actually the reason behind the cover image, even if the original intention of the cover image changed. I even had it about 2/5th of the way written by Saturday. I just needed to write the second half+ of the chapter.

Even with all of that, it kept me pretty much the entire day to finish. I don't think I posted until like 9 or 10 at night.

Whatever it was that held me back, this chapter was still one of the fastest turn-arounds I've ever written.

• December 24th, I posted the first chapter of "Woven Heartstrings"
• January 1st, after an eight-day wait, which was largely due to celebrating the holidays, the second chapter went up.
• January 6th, the third chapter was posted; it kept me five days that time.
• January 12th, after six days of working on it, I posted the fourth chapter.
• January 17th saw chapter five, after going back to a five-day turn around.
• And then there's January 20th being the publishing date of chapter six. Making it only a three-day turn-around between postings!

I'm getting faster.... I'm also not focusing on anything but writing for the most part, so I'm definitely not going to be able to sustain this. Still, I want to push through the last chapter and epilogue of this story as fast as I can. It's already close to a month since this Christmas story first posted. Not too bad if said month was December and the last chapter was around Christmas. It's kind of pathetic, though, to have a Christmas-themed story extend so far into January.

But I'm refusing to take down my tree until I'm done. It helps keep me in the Christmas spirit...

On the plus side, yesterday was the first zero-day in 10 days!

I just needed a break. I'm still dumbfounded by Taurus Pixie's ability to write and post A NEW CHAPTER EVERY DAY for twelve solid days straight when she wrote "Twelve Days of Chatmas." I'm exhausted with a three-day turn-around!

If you'd like to read the fruits of my labor, you can check out the chapters in their normal locations.

"Chapter 5: Both of Us"

On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

"Chapter 6: Bonded"

On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

I am pleasantly surprised by the reception of this story. I'm already up to 4,072 hits, 87 follows, 54 faves, and 25 reviews on FanFiction. Over on AO3, I have 1,560 views, 15 bookmarks, 142 kudos! - of which 75 are from guests - and 10 comments.

What really shocked me was how many notes I have on Tumblr for the latest chapter's announcement.

• Chapter 1 announcement; announcement of the new story "Woven Heartstrings"
• 2 notes. Understandable, it was over the holiday... and both notes were Pixie: one liking and one reblogging with a comment.
• Chapter 2 announcement
• 7 notes. I was actually impressed to get that many after a week's wait for the next chapter, and the fact that it was past Christmas
• Chapter 3 announcement
• 8 notes; the slight increase included ChibiSunnie commenting and me responding
• Chapter 4 announcement
• Jumped up to 16 notes! One of which was my first reblog outside of Pixie.
• Chapter 5 announcement
• Back down to 8 notes, but one was a new reblog. A separate person than Pixie or the person who reblogged chapter 4.
• Chapter 6 announcement
• We're back up to 15 notes. Two of which were reblogs.

The real killer thing is that virtually no one who liked a previous chapter's promotional post liked any subsequent ones. I'm not sure how I should feel about that....

All in all, there were 42 different people liking and/or reblogging my story update announcements this month. The most consistent fans are ssarielss, who only missed the chapter 4 update, and keemikoko, who liked the promos for chapters 2, 3, and 4. The blog fanfictionrecommendations-com has liked the posts for chapters 5 and 6, but without reblogging them I'm not sure if that really helps me.... They seem to have themed weeks and only share within that theme, so perhaps they're just stockpiling for when Miraculous Ladybug gets their week???? We'll see. Either way, the blog looks very professionally designed and maintained, so that's pretty awesome. If you need a good recommendation, you should give them a check. Let me know if you find any good ones.

By the way, speaking of reception of this story, I have to say I've been getting such sweet reviews for this thing. One of the best reviews came from my freak-out in the closing Author's Notes of the latest chapter.

Fair Warning: Since This Comment Is In Response To Closing A/Ns, There Are Spoilers To The Chapter.
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YE   HAS   ENTERED    SPOILER   TERRITORY

This chapter was tricky. I knew almost from the get-go that I wanted Adrien to use his new crocheting skills to make a scarf for his father, which is why the candy-cane-striped scarf is part of the cover illustration. I also felt that Nathalie and the Gorilla needed scarves as well. The trick, though, was I don't want to give Gabe and Nathalie too much sympathy. I don't want to make people think I'm okay with their small acts of affection making up for all the neglect and endangerment thrown at Adrien. At the same time though, ADRIEN is a very forgiving kid still, and would GLADLY forgive both of them with just the tiniest bit of affection. All he wants is to be loved, and he'll take it where he can get it. So, I wanted Adrien to feel authentic, but please know that by NO MEANS am I condoning anything Gabriel and Nathalie are doing.

To which I received this response:

Guest: Me thinks you worry too much. We know that a character's voice is not the author's voice. An author's voice doesn't really belong in a fic - it sounds too preachy.

It was authentic and it did not feel like condoning evil. No need to explain it.

So, thank you, Guest, whoever you are. I think part of my avoiding-writing-the-chapter problem was because I was over-thinking. I appreciate the love.
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ALRIGHT! SPOILERS ARE DONE NOW!

Another review of note that I received was for chapter 4:

Nkemmer777: In your second paragraph of this chapter it’s frigid not “frigged”. Just letting you know! Love this so far!

I actually laughed so hard when I saw that review. I KNEW that word didn't look right, but I didn't get the red spell check squiggle, so I just thought I was being silly. Once it was pointed out that I was indeed right - I had used the wrong word - I got a giggle over my whoopsie, and another over my accidentally having Tikki "curse" in the beginning of that chapter.

I appreciate that my readers feel comfortable enough to be able to point things like that out to me so I could polish up my stories a bit more.

Naturally, I fixed my typo, and thanked Nkemmer777 for her help. She then followed up with a thanks for the shout-out and an offer to beta-read for me. I didn't take her up on her offer since I'm nearly done with WH, but we did get to chatting, and I'm probably going to have her beta-read for "One and the Same" once I have the darn draft finished!

In the meantime, I offered to beta-read for her instead. She's working on a one-shot right now, and she has one in-progress story up on FFN. Instead of writing or doing anything productive for my own stories yesterday, I went ahead and beta-read her stories. I just need to get my notes to her... so guess what I'm doing once I'm done here.

She has really cute concepts, and I can see the fluffy goodness potential. I'm excited to see how each story concludes. Although, I'm not entirely sure how the one story is going to be just a one-shot. It has so much to tell. Then again, I do have a 12,000 word one-shot for "Hey, Arnold!" so it's possible she will just do one really long one-shot like that.

Anyway, feel free to check out her profile and see the start of an interesting story.

In the meantime, I should probably get my notes to her, and get started on the penultimate chapter to WH.... or, rather, final chapter since the last "chapter" is a brief epilogue....

Either way... TO WRITING!

X all the Y meme
Originally from Hyperbole and a Half

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

I actually have my blue-framed glasses on today too....